Just over a year after a landslide caused 600 feet from the 22st state road to Teton Pass between Jackson, Wyo. And Eastern Idaho to collapse, the construction is complete in a rebuilt permanent section that uses a light glass aggregate. The crews with a team led by Ames Construction and Keller are completing the articles on the list of punches and sow new trees for the newly open section of the tourist and tourist route.
The road section was closed last year by the Wyoming Department of Transport, which had been monitoring the area prone to slides and hired Evans Construction as an emergency contractor to stabilize it. Evans quickly mobilized on June 7, 2024 to repair a fissure and a fall on the road near the mile 12.8, and removed the asphalt to minimize weight in unstable soil. Despite its efforts, the road fell about 6 inches per hour and collapsed on June 8.
“In this area, approximately every 10-15 years we have a landslide that blocks the road, covers it in mud or debris, or the road falls,” says Bob Hammond, a resident engineer in the state. It usually happens around May or June, when the winter snow melts, adds. “We acknowledge that if there are five nights in a row without freezing, there will be a greater amount of melting. With saturated terrain, something will let go somewhere.”
It is known that the collapsed section of Teton Pass is prone to Earth.
Photo Courtesy Ames Construction
While Evans completed the emergency diversion and opened it to traffic at the end of June, the dowry began planning the permanent solution, which would occur in two work packages and cost about $ 40 million. Hammond says the first job pack was ready in about two months, with another month for the second.
“The contractor was on board about four weeks after the detachment,” he adds, saying that the state “imitated” the method of delivery of the general contractor of the construction manager after consulting with colleagues like Colorado’s dowry. “We are now writing our policy” in the delivery approach, according to him.
RJ Engineering and Consulting designed the Embards and the permanent road, originally with a light fluid concrete material. Hammond claims that Ames proposed the use of Aero foam glass material aggregated for their durability and waterproof nature.
The crews captured the 60,000 Cu YD of glass with crushed base to achieve a composite effect, he says. The glass material by itself “was almost too light: 25 pounds per cubic foot. We were shot by 60 pounds or so,” he says.
The work involved an excavation of 100 feet adjoining the temporary detour. Burns Cooney Dennis designed a wall nail wall system to provide support, with 350 seam feet and two walls.
Pete Schexnayder, responsible for the AMES project, estimates that there was around 64,000 cesses of excavation, with 19,000 Cu YD used to build a transport road. To fulfill the calendar restrictions, including a limited winter activity, the crews used a geotextile thread mesh face for the sloping part of the road embankment. It consists of empty bars installed up to 50 feet and horizontal drains.
After the temporary construction of the soil nails, the crews installed horizontal drainage and micropiles installed at the base of the permanent embankment up to 60 feet, according to Schexnayder.
RJ Engineering designed the micropiles to provide a shear reinforcement at the base of the embankment with the filling above. After the micropiles were installed, the crews placed a 6 to 8 feet of 6 -inch rock around them, built two concrete caps on top, and placed 2 -foot elevators from the collapsed glass aggregate alternating with 4 -foot base sections, up to a total of 100 feet.
The crews completed the permanent road and demolished the temporary diversion for a weekend of total traffic closing, opening the new road on June 30, the month before, according to Schexnayder. Hammond adds that interest groups were asked if they preferred to use the detour while the work took 10 days and involved traffic delays or using other detours during a single weekend. Everyone said that “it was a better plan,” he says.
Archie Filshill, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aero Agregats, says that the use of the project material diverted the equivalent of 50 million glass bottles of the landfills. Sending this volume of material would have required six times more trucks if weighted and traditional filling materials were used.
Although the product of the firm stands out for its role in the quick construction of a temporary embankment to support Interstate 95 in Philadelphia in 2023 after a fire, most of the projects that use it are permanent structures such as the Teaton Pass Road and aerodrome infrastructure as Philadelphia Airport.
